You are jack of all trades and master of none. If something uses electricity, you will be expected to make it work and fix it. Retired Signal Sergeant Virgin Houston said this “I think this is the hardest signal MOS because you are alone in an infantry or other type unit. It appears that the overall attitude of the Army has been, a signal soldier is a signal soldier.Ĭurrent MOS 25C Radio Operator/Maintainer is being merged into MOS 25U Signal Support Systems Specialist. 25B’s working in 25N positions and vice versa, 25U’s working in both. Throughout the dozens of comments, I found from current and former signal soldiers, the one subject that came up in almost all, was that they did a lot of cross-training, because they were often not assigned to a job consistent with their MOS. The US Army Signal School is located at the Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, Georgia (Augusta). Some MOS consolidations are scheduled to be completed October 1st 2022. This is a transition currently in process and won’t be completed for another two to four years. The signal jobs (MOS’s) for which an individual may enlist are being reduced from 13 to 6, and finally, I believe, to 4. It is revamping all signal AIT’s to the new consolidated MOS’s, to produce better trained and more versatile signal soldiers. In an interview in August 2019, Brigadier General (BG) Christopher Eubanks, Chief of Signal and Commandant of the Signal School, at that time, said that the Signal Corps is consolidating from 17 MOS’s to 7. The Army also has computer geeks, it just hasn’t been allowing them to take risks and try new things. In the civilian world the computer geek at the keyboard is the first line of defense. In the cyber world of today, it works but someone is trying to get our data, which is the number of troop movements, logistics, ammunition, operations orders – everything. In the Signal Corps of the old days of radios, it worked or it didn’t work. They said the culture of the Signal Corps had to change. In other words, not allowing the addicted computer geek specialists and sergeants to try anything outside specific guidelines, to defeat a cyber threat. Their point was that the Signal Corps had become so addicted to rigidly complying with cyber standards that it was afraid to take risks. Then in November 2018, Colonel Joseph Pishock, Commander of the 1st Signal Brigade in Korea, together with Major James Torrence, Operations officer of the 41st Signal Battalion of the 1st Signal Brigade, wrote a scathing article in “Small Wars Journal” about the US Army Signal Corps. The new CCORI was to not only test a system for compliance with all DOD directives, but to challenge the security of that system. In April 2016, the Department of Defense (DOD) started moving from the Command Cyber Readiness Inspection (CCRI) to the Command Cyber Operations Readiness Inspection (CCORI). The US Army Signal Corps is now in the midst of change. In the past eight to ten years, Army leadership – the three and four stars – who came up the ranks with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, having to deal with logistics, casualties, and communications, while dealing with an enemy combatant, have been changing the Army more rapidly than it has changed since World War II. The military hired civilian contractors, and the signal people complained that they weren’t being used. As a result, when Iraq and Afghanistan exploded, the Army had qualified communications soldiers, but it took four or five communications specialists, each trained in a narrowly defined task, to do what could be efficiently performed by one civilian contractor. The Army Signal Corps struggled to keep up, it trained soldiers to be computer savvy communicators, but they were still highly specialized. In the 20 years between 19, the world switched to communicating via computer. Those were highly specialized, technical jobs. In the “old Army”, with the inclusion of satellites in the military communications systems, enlisted signal jobs ranged from a radio operator/maintainer, with an AIT (Advanced Individual Training) of about eight weeks, to satellite and microwave system operators and maintainers, and multi-channel communication center maintainers, with AIT’s of sometimes over 30 weeks. The US Army Signal Corps is currently undergoing a massive and rapid evolution. They currently require a four year enlistment and a SECRET security clearance. These are some of the most civilian marketable army jobs. Signal Soldiers are, or soon will be Information Technology Specialist – MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) 25B, Signal Support Specialist – MOS 25U, Network Communications Systems Specialist – MOS 25H, and Satellite Communications Systems Operator/Maintainer – MOS 25S. This is about the signal corps in general. This is a follow up to my story on MOS 25B, army IT specialist “BE AN ARMY COMPUTER GUY OR GAL”.
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