Made in 1975, “Horizons Unlimited” is a U.S. Navy recruiting film that introduces sailors to the duties of the Operations Specialist (OS) rating. The first part of the film features a brief history of radar, beginning in World War II, and classroom exercises on topics such as radar repeaters. The second part of the film shows a training simulation in the “A” School CIC mockup, and commentary by Operations Specialists.
Operations Specialist (abbreviated as OS) is a United States Navy and United States Coast Guard occupational rating. It is a sea duty-intensive rating in the Navy while the majority of Coast Guard OS’s are at ashore Command Centers.
The rating started from the radarman (RD) rating. In the U.S. Coast Guard the Operations specialist rate was formed by combining the radarman (RD) and telecommunications specialist rate (TC). When the radarman rating was split up into OS, electronics technician (ET), and electronic warfare technician (EW) ratings, the original RD rating badge continued to be used by the operations specialist. It symbolizes the radar scope (circle portion of symbol) oscilloscope radar (O-scope) used to determine a targets range from the radar antenna (the two spikes in the line drawn across the scope), and the arrow represents the ability to detect the azimuth or direction of the target.
Operations specialists aboard U.S. Navy combat vessels work in the combat information center (CIC) or combat direction center (CDC), aka: “combat”, the tactical nerve center of the ship. Using a wide variety of assets available to them, Operations Specialists are responsible for the organized collection, processing, display, competent evaluation and rapid dissemination of pertinent tactical combat information to command and control stations, upon which sound tactical decisions may be made. Beginning training (called “A” school) for operations specialist’s was originally located at the Naval Training Center (NTC) in Great Lakes Illinois. In 1979 it was moved to Dam Neck in Virginia Beach, Virginia; the school has since moved back to Training Support Center (TSC) of NAVSTA Great Lakes in Illinois. Intermediate and advanced training are in locations like California, Virginia, and various locations throughout the United States Navy. An RDA school was also located on Treasure Island at San Francisco, Calif.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
