National President's Message

Build Your Foundation

By CAPT Timothy "Buck" Rogers, USN

Greetings from NHA!

We are kicking off the New Year and are very excited for what’s in store for 2025. Looking back, 2024 was an extremely high tempo, operationally significant year. There never has been a time in my career where Rotary Wing as a community has been busier or more relevant. This looks to continue into the New Year with CVW-17 just wrapping up COMPTUEX with HSC-6 and HSM-73.

With the increase in the pace of the Fleet, an emphasis on the basics and a reevaluation of how we build our cadre is the focus of this edition of Rotor Review (#167 Build Your Foundation). This hits home and is evident every day from my vantage point as the West Coast HSM FRS CO. The FRS occupies a unique space in Naval Aviation. It is the finishing school to round out our newly minted Aviators coming from Whiting; a place where they are introduced to the Fleet, their T/M/S, and the community they will be assigned to for the rest of their career. Beyond the CAT 1s that start off their Fleet journey at the FRS, it is also where seasoned Aviators re-center themselves after tours away from operational squadrons and flying. They come back to reblue their warfighting prowess and rehone the basics that atrophied while away from cockpit. In short, the FRS establishes and reestablishes the foundation for aviators ensuring they are Fleet Ready. Beyond being necessary, a strong foundation is evolving, requiring the best Fleet aviators to grow and shape it to meet the ever changing needs of our operational environment. It is for this reason that the best of our JOs are continuously detailed here. They bring the latest lessons learned from what’s happening in theater to ensure readiness for those headed to sea. As a two time instructor and four time student, I owe a great deal of my growth as a pilot to this collaborative approach to building the various category syllabi I completed and the inter-generational learning that I experienced at HSM-41. To this end, the FRS takes pride in the wins and firsts of the Fleet, knowing that the foundation was set here for the successes and accomplishments achieved underway.

As we look to 2025, I want to highlight some of the great work happening behind the scenes to continue the NHA momentum from 2024:

• 2024 Gulf Coast Fleet Fly-In Debrief complete and on to 2025 planning … expecting Fall 2025 as our targeted timeframe.

• Increase in our social media footprint highlighting Fleet operations. Kicking off with “Fleet Friday” on our Instagram feed.

• Tech refresh for our website and Symposium registration portal.

• Full focus on Symposium 2025 “First Off Deck” (14-16 May 2025) at Harrah’s Resort Southern California.

Fly Safe and V/r, Buck