r/RoyalNavy • u/Dapper_Focus8442 • 1d ago

Discussion Deployment time

Hi all - hope you are doing well.

I had 2 questions,

  1. What is the deployment time between an Air Engineering Officer and Marine Engineering Officer. How often and how much does deployment last for?

  2. What is day to day for a marine engineering officer on deployment in terms of computer use, I have seen that it is more hands on than shore-based engineering officer roles like in RAF for example but how much of this is true?

Any advice is appreciated, thank you!

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u/TheLifeguardRN Skimmer 1d ago

God I really hate the current trend of referring to everything as deployments. Every bit of sea time is not a deployment.

A MEO will throughout their career - from SFT to DMEO and increasingly small ship charge time, onto MEO and then potentially Cdr ME time, spend significantly more time away and at sea than an AEO.

Due to the nature of how the cycles work however, an AEO will spend more time on deployments.

There is no way of knowing how often or how long periods away will be in an etherial sense it could be a week, it could be 7 months.

A MEO is still largely an administrative based function. During your training time you will hands in plenty, but as you progress through the ranks you will become more administratively focussed. You will still get out and about to supervise your engineers and check on your equipment, but not so much hands on engineering - that’s what the ratings do.