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The Complete Guide to Becoming An Aircraft Launch and Recovery Officer
The real pay, the real path, and the real day-to-day of running flight decks at sea — so you can decide if it's worth the fight.
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: What Does a Aircraft Launch and Recovery Officer Actually Do?
If you have ever stood on a flight deck during flight ops — even just watching from a video — you know it looks like controlled chaos. Jets scream off catapults, landing gear thumps onto a pitching deck, and yellow-shirted sailors scurry between aircraft with hand signals. The person responsible for making that chaos actually work, safely and on schedule, is the Aircraft Launch and Recovery Officer, or ALRO. This is not a pilot job. You will not be flying the aircraft. You will be the person on the deck, in the tower, or in the control rooms who makes sure the aircraft can fly, recover, and go back out again.
The title "Aircraft Launch and Recovery Officer" covers a family of related officer billets in naval aviation, most commonly on aircraft carriers. In the United States Navy, the specific job is often called a "Catapult and Arresting Gear Officer" or simply a "CAG officer" — not to be confused with the Carrier Air Group commander, who also goes by "CAG." The role is part of the ship's engineering and operations departments, and it is focused on one thing: the systems that launch and recover aircraft, and the people who operate them. You are a hybrid of an engineer, a logistics manager, and a safety officer, all rolled into one.
Your core responsibility is the operation and maintenance of the ship's launch and recovery equipment. On a modern