Can anybody shed some light as to what a "normal" day is in the world of MSST? Also, what would be the best way to get a MSST billet, BM or GM or some other rating I'm not listing? Thanks for the insight!

My team.

Gym at 0630-0730-45 Unit workout on Tuesday and Thursday

0800-0845, BSing ensues. Coffee is drank, food is eaten. Friendly "insults", jokes, and jabs are thrown back and forth across the tables

8545 Muster.

0900-1230 Work. Could be cleaning boats, doing paperwork, training, U/W for various things, riding ferries, etc.

outta there by 1300.

It's just like any CG unit. Chiefs still drink an obscene amount of coffee ; there is never enough time in the day/week/month to do what you need to. Stuff breaks, and someone has to fix it. Some days there is absolutely nothing to do, other days you stay till 1800, and it still isn't enough. About the only difference is my team is at the gym every morning, and we work out as a group on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Don't tell him all our secrets Andy. He might not have a security clearance!!

So, you guys are on trop hours, and you've got about three hours for effective time. And that's okay, been there, done that. Nothing wrong with maximizing the slow days, because there always seems to be enough long days or away from home to make up for it ... but it leads to some rhetorical questions, I guess ... just for discussion's sake:

Depending on where you are, or your AOR, would you be better utilized if you did a "saturation" thing at your various port areas? You know, high visibility, high presence in commercial port areas, showing the flag, making your presence felt? Or would that just interfere with normal marine business and commerce?

How about training evolutions? It seems as tho many specops teams don't have enough time to fully train in all aspects of skillsets that might be used "in action". My CG experience tells me the opposite might be true for you all: not enough money, and not enough "planning officers" to fully engage the MSST in intensive field exercises ... especially not enough money (usually travel funds, I'll bet).

Is it possible that more creativity on the part of your command would work to activate the
team in a higher training tempo? I know that's been the case before; I find that the enlisteds usually have a ton of workable ideas to promote team training, rapport and cohesion.

I guess I'm hoping that you guys aren't floundering and awash in time that's under-utilized. That would be frustrating, and detrimental to unit pride. And of course, it should go without saying that I'm an old phart, and may not fully understand your op tempo. I just hope you feel like you're trained up, manned up and ready to go.

Not all MSST's are the same though. Here in Kings Bay we have PT Monday - Friday from 0730 - 0900. After that is shower time until 0930. From then you work until lunch, which is an hour, then you continue until 1600. I would like to see the DOG standardize the units, but I don't see that being too high on the priority list for right now. Perhaps in the future.

MC, you bring up several good points. Sadly those were the sentiments of many of us in the MSST community a few years ago. We tried to exercise the unit at least every few months to stay sharp. Sadly there were "politcal" struggles between AREA and the Groups over TACON of the U/W assets. That led to the cancellation of several exercises... I think that once this program matures and we get a clear task mission for the MSSTs, we should see them more engaged with local OPS and less time "wasted" traveling to other ports to do "harpats"... or so I hope.

V/r